instructor: Jentery Sayers 
~ classroom: smi 309 
& ougl 101 ~ TTh: 9:30-11:20
What's sonic culture?
For the purposes of this course, let's consider sonic culture studies a series of inquiries into the intersections of music, digital media, sound, and sound technologies in the formation of cultures, histories, and subjectivities. By the end of the course, we might want to toss out this definition and re-think sonic culture in new terms. We'll see (or hear) soon enough. In the meantime, below are some relevant sites, texts, and materials.
Have something to add? Let me know in class, during office hours, or by e-mail , and I'll post your addition here.
Websites
Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame
Steven Shaviro's Fall 2005 Course, "Sonic Culture," at Wayne State University
People
Academic Texts
Adorno, Theodor W. Essays on Music. Ed. Richard Leppert. Trans. Susan H. Gillespie. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002.
Armstrong, Tim. “Player Piano: Poetry and Sonic Modernity.” Modernism/Modernity 14.1 (2007): 1-19.
Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Theory and history of literature, v. 16. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985.
Brooks, William. “Music: Sound: Technology.” The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture. Ed. C. W. E. Bigsby. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 332-353.
Bull, Michael, and Les Back, eds. The Auditory Culture Reader. Sensory Formations Series. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2003.
Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia U P, 1994.
Davis, Hugh. “A History of Recorded Sound.” Poésie Sonore Internationale. Ed. Henri Chopin. Paris: Jean-Michel Place Editeur, 1979. 13-40.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattarri. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.
Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books, 1998.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993.
Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Kahn, Douglas. Noise, Water, Meat A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
Kahn, Douglas, and Gregory Whitehead, eds. Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992.
Kittler, Friedrich A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Writing Science). Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wautz. Stanford, CA: Stanford U P, 1999.
Kleinberg-Levin, David Michael, ed. Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.
Miller, Paul D. (DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid). Rhythm Science. Cambridge, MA: Mediawork/MIT Press, 2004.
Morris, Adalaide Kirby. Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997.
Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past. Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham: Duke U P, 2003
Thompson, Emily Ann. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002.
Weheliye, Alexander G. Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Durham: Duke U P, 2005.
And again, if you have something that you think is relevant to a page on sonic culture and want to share it, then let me know! I'll post it here.
uw english | jentery at u.washington.edu
